Current Lab Members
Justin Kitzes
Associate Professor
Marianna Brown Dietrich Breakthrough Scholar
Associate Chair, Department of Biological Sciences
Associate Director, AI for Science, Hub for AI and Data Science Leadership
Research Co-Lead, Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation
Biodiversity Research Lead, AI and Biodiversity Change Global Center
justin.kitzes@pitt.edu
CV | Google Scholar
Justin Kitzes is an Associate Professor and Marianna Brown Dietrich Breakthrough Scholar in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. His research focuses on the use of automated sensors and artificial intelligence (AI) models to study biodiversity at large spatial and temporal scales, with a particular expertise in the development and application of terrestrial bioacoustic methods. Along with many collaborators, his lab has deployed thousands of acoustic recorders across multiple field sites to study the ecology and conservation of rare and hard-to-detect birds, frogs, bats, and other sound-producing taxa.
Dr. Kitzes was trained as an interdisciplinary quantitative ecologist, receiving his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Earth Systems from Stanford University and his Ph.D. in Environmental Science, Policy and Management from the University of California Berkeley. He completed his postdoctoral studies in the Energy and Resources Group and the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS) at UC Berkeley.
Website | Twitter
Tessa is a Ph.D. student (and former staff programmer) working on community analysis, bird call classification software, and statistical models.
Website
Pat is a Ph.D. student working on monitoring and evaluating the effects of habitat restoration in Pennsylvania forests.
Louis is a Ph.D. student working on our sound localization platform, bird call classification models, and open source software.
Lauren is a Ph.D. student (and former undergrad and Research Assistant) investigating within-species vocalizations and leading development of our bird song classifiers.
Chapin is a Ph.D. student working on our Pennsylvania projects and bird song analysis.
Santiago is a Ph.D. student working on our amphibian and tropical bird research.
Brooke is a staff researcher managing our audio data and assisting with research in Pennsylvania forests.
Leonardo is a staff researcher working on our bird call classification models and structural equation modeling.
Ben is a staff researcher working on our hardware development projects and localization algorithms.
Davis is a staff researcher working on our avian and amphibian conservation projects.
Lab Alumni
Postdocs and Graduate Students
- Sam Lapp, Graduate Student
- Cameron Fiss, Postdoctoral Scholar
Staff
- Hannah Nossan, Research Assistant
- Alexandra Syunkova, Research Assistant
- Nickolus Stahlman, Research Assistant
- Jatin Khilnani, Research Assistant
- Trieste Devlin, Research Assistant
Undergraduate Students
- Davis Hinds, University of Pittsburgh
- Ben Munkres, Carnegie Mellon University
- Grace Keywork, University of Pittsburgh
- Noelle Smith, University of Pittsburgh
- Tabea Schneider, University of Pittsburgh
- Addison O’Malley, University of Pittsburgh
- Junshang Jia, University of Pittsburgh
- Carolyn Tett, University of Pittsburgh
- Elias Paolone, University of Pittsburgh
- Sagar Vellalath, University of Pittsburgh
- Tiger Wu, University of Minnesota
- Talia Piretra, University of Pittsburgh
- Anna Lippert, University of Pittsburgh
- Madeline Hice, University of Pittsburgh
- Sarah Heise, University of Pittsburgh
- Jiade Song, University of Pittsburgh
- Jack Challiet, University of Chicago
- Tanvi Merengenti, Carnegie Mellon University
- Lydia Zimmerman, University of Pittsburgh
- Aaron Lauer, University of Pittsburgh
- Madoc Smith, University of Pittsburgh
- Kyle Walters, University of Pittsburgh